Computers in Human Behavior 37 (2014) 152161

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Computers in Human Behavior

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The roles of brand community and community engagement in building

brand trust on social media
Mohammad Reza Habibi a, Michel Laroche a,, Marie-Odile Richard b,1
a
Department of Marketing, John Molson School of Business, Concordia University, 1455 de Maisonneuve West, Montral, Qubec H3G 1M8, Canada
b
Independent Researcher

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Brand communities and social media often overlap. Social media is an ideal environment for building
brand communities. However, there is limited research about the benets and consequences of brand
communities established on social media platforms. This study addresses this issue by developing a
Keywords: model depicting how consumers relationship with the elements of a brand community based on social
Brand community media (i.e. brand, product, company, and other consumers) inuence brand trust. The ndings include
Social media that three of the four relationships positively inuence brand trust. However, customer-other customers
Community engagement
relationships negatively inuence brand trust, which is counter intuitive and interesting. The prominent
Brand trust
Consumer centric model
role of engagement in a brand community is also investigated in the model. Community engagement
Facebook amplies the strength of the relationships consumers make with the elements of brand community
and it has a moderating effect in translating the effects of such relationships on brand trust. Finally, the-
oretical and managerial implications are discussed.
2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction technologies evolved to their current highly social forms. Today,

The emergence of social media has dramatically inuenced
marketing practices. The conventional well-established marketing
practices are not highly inuential anymore and in many cases can
backre on the rm (Fournier & Avery, 2011; Hennig-Thurau,
Hofacker, & Bloching, 2013). Therefore, there is an ever increasing
need for updating the understanding of social media and further
develop knowledge which suits the imperatives of marketing in
social media environments (Hennig-Thurau et al., 2013). One main
challenge for marketers has been to see how their efforts can pay
off and how their social media activities can inuence important
brand related variables (Hoffman & Fodor, 2010).
This article takes the brand community literature as the main
theoretical lens to address this issue. The concepts of brand com-
munity and social media meet at a critical juncture: community
or socialness. Brand communities are essentially a place (physical
or virtual) for people who admire a certain brand to socialize in
the context provided, at least partly, by that brand (McAlexander,
Schouten, & Koenig, 2002; Muniz & OGuinn, 2001). Brand commu-
nity practices gradually gained more attention from marketing
researchers and practitioners. At the same time the Internet
Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 514 848 2424x2942; fax: +1 514 848 4576.
E-mail addresses: mo_habi@jmsb.concordia.ca (M.R. Habibi), laroche@jmsb.
concordia.ca (M. Laroche), marie-odile.richard10@hec.ca (M.-O. Richard).
1
Tel.: +1 514 738 3520.
the brand communities and their online platforms are a match
more than ever before; the social aspects of brand communities
are strongly backed by the social and networked nature of social
media. Not only is social media a natural place for brand commu-
nities, but there are recent empirical studies showing the existence
(Zaglia, 2013), quality and unique aspects of brand communities
embedded in social media platforms (Habibi, Laroche, & Richard,
2014).
This article develops a conceptual framework that shows how
building blocks of a brand community established on social media
can inuence brand trust. Indeed one main marketing objective is
to gain consumers trust in the brand. Trust is important during
the shopping process (Powers, Advincula, Austin, Graiko, & Snyder,
2012) and is a main antecedent of patronage (Pentina, Zhang, &
Basmanova, 2013; See-To & Ho, 2014). Therefore, knowing if/how
social media based brand communities (SMBBCs) inuence brand
trust is essential for marketers. In addition, this might be helpful
to managers in social media contexts because measuring social
media ROI is a challenge for them and one way of measuring ROI is
to examine what kind of marketing objectives the social media
activities would satisfy (Hoffman & Fodor, 2010, p. 42). Thus, this
article focuses on brand trust and examines how SMBBCs inuence
customers trust in a brand.
The article also looks at the role of engagement in brand com-
munities as it is a very relevant variable in social media. Perhaps

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2014.04.016
0747-5632/ 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
 M.R. Habibi et al. / Computers in Human Behavior 37 (2014) 152161
one of the main goals of being present in social media is to gain a
higher share of consumers attention and engagement (Hanna,
Rohm, & Crittenden, 2011). The article investigates the moderating
role of brand community engagement in the conceptual frame-
work and also examines the direct role this variable has on the
building blocks of a brand community (i.e., consumer relationships
with product, brand, company and other consumers; McAlexander
et al., 2002).
Despite its importance, limited research was done in the area of
SMBBC. The current knowledge of online brand communities does
not t with the new aspects of SMBBCs in which the structure of
the communities, the social context within which members com-
municate, the size, and the way stories are being told are different
from previous types of brand communities (Habibi et al., 2014).
This research makes important contributions by lling this void.
Unlike research that treat brand community as a whole (Moran &
Gossieaux, 2001; Laroche, Habibi, Richard, & Sankaranarayanan,
2012), this article looks at the brand community through its build-
ing blocks (McAlexander et al., 2002) and it examines how each
element inuences brand trust. More importantly, it measures
and includes community engagement and examines how it inu-
ences the brand community elements and how it moderates these
effects on brand trust. The ndings provide detailed insights for
marketers and identify which elements of a brand community
can be detrimental and which can be benecial in building a trust-
worthy brand through brand community building practices on
social media.
The paper is organized as follows. First, an extensive literature
review of brand communities is conducted. We describe different
research streams related to brand communities and situate this
article within the brand community literature. Then we argue
why brand communities on social media are unique and must be
studied separately. Next, we develop our hypotheses which relate
to our conceptual model of how SMBBC can inuence brand trust.
Finally, we report the results of our study. We conclude with a dis-
cussion of our ndings, limitations of our research and avenues for
future research.
2. Literature review
2.1. Brand community
The brand community concept developed in response to two
increasing challenges that faced by marketers. The rst one was
the difculty of keeping up with one-on-one relationships with
customers, which was one main idea behind relationship market-
ing (Berry, 1995). Although keeping long term personalized one-
on-one relationships with customers would bring many benets
to rms (Sheth & Parvatiyar, 2000), it would increase its costs
and the time spent on developing relationships, which makes rela-
tionship marketing less efcient in practice (Iacobucci, 1994;
Muniz & OGuinn, 2001). Thus, brand communities that can per-
form many important functions on behalf of the brand, such as
providing assistance or socializing the customer with brand ele-
ments, can play an important role in realizing the values of rela-
tionship marketing with higher efciency. In a brand community
consumers play the role of the brands agents within the commu-
nity (Muniz & OGuinn, 2001). The second challenge brand commu-
nities address is a lack of having a powerful analytic category to
study consumer behavior. Consumers interpersonal activities
and life styles have more explanatory power in understanding
how consumers spend their time and money than conventional
categories marketers used to segment consumers such as age and
gender (Schouten & McAlexander, 1995). Therefore, brand commu-
nities provide a reliable analytical category to marketers which
153
facilitate understanding consumer behavior (McAlexander et al.,
2002).
A brand community is a specialized, non-geographically bound
community based on a structured set of social relations among
admirers of a brand (Muniz & OGuinn, 2001, p. 412). Similar to
other communities, a brand community has three indicators that
make a community recognizable. These indicators are shared con-
sciousness, shared rituals and traditions, and obligations to society.
Shared consciousness is a felt sense of connection among members
within a brand community. These feelings lead members to feel
that an invisible hand connects them to each other and separates
them from outsiders (Bagozzi & Dholakia, 2006b; Muniz &
OGuinn, 2001). Rituals and traditions are symbolic acts or gestures
that are developed throughout the history of the brand and aim to
perpetuate and communicate the symbolic meanings and culture
of the brand community (Muniz & OGuinn, 2001). For example,
consumers use a specic jargon inside the community which is a
cultural element of the community that solidies members bonds.
The third marker is obligations to society which is the sense of com-
mitment members have toward the welfare of their fellow mem-
bers and the community (Muniz & OGuinn, 2001). This
commitment is the main driver in participating in brand use prac-
tices through which members help each other optimize their brand
use (Schau, Muiz, & Arnould, 2009).
In addition to these three markers, a brand community is essen-
tially constructed on a set of relationships that community mem-
bers develop with the brand, the product, marketers, and other
customers. As opposed to initial models of brand communities
which assumed only relationships between consumers, the cus-
tomer centric model of brand community considers the relationships
among all involved elements in a brand community (McAlexander
et al., 2002) . Therefore, the building blocks of a brand community
are four relationships: customer-product, customer-brand, cus-
tomer-company, and customer-other customers. This provides a
useful framework for analyzing brand communities as well as
brand community building practices. Later we build on this model
to develop our hypotheses depicting how these relationships can
enhance brand trust.
2.2. Main research streams about brand community
In brand community research, three main research streams are
gaining attention from researchers. The rst stream relates to the
conceptual aspects of brand communities which together concep-
tualize a brand community and identify its dening characteristics
and limits (Brown, Kozinets, & Sherry, 2003; McAlexander et al.,
2002; Muniz & OGuinn, 2001; Schau et al., 2009; Muiz &
Schau, 2007). Articles in this research stream do not address the
outcomes and consequences of brand communities directly but
they mainly focus on brand community elements and activities
(McAlexander et al., 2002; Muniz & OGuinn, 2001), but they also
indirectly mention the outcomes brand community practices
would bring about for rms and consumers (Brown et al., 2003;
Schau et al., 2009; Muiz & Schau, 2007). The other streams specif-
ically deal with the outcomes (and their antecedents) of brand
communities for consumers and brands. Also many articles exam-
ined how brand communities are established.
2.3. Where and how to identify brand communities
Researchers wondered if brand communities exist on different
platforms, in different sizes, and around different products. This
question is important because several brand community success
stories tempted marketing managers to establish brand communi-
ties in different settings and contexts. One cannot call any collec-
tive a community unless the collective presents the markers of a
154 M.R. Habibi et al. / Computers in Human Behavior 37 (2014) 152161
community (Muniz & OGuinn, 2001). Fortunately, this stream of
research stressed that brand communities can exist in different
forms such as ofine/physical (Muniz & OGuinn, 2001;
Algesheimer, Dholakia, & Herrmann, 2005; McAlexander et al.,
2002), online/virtual (Adjei, Noble, & Noble, 2010; Muiz &
Schau, 2007; Thompson & Sinha, 2008), small or large (Bagozzi &
Dholakia, 2006a; McAlexander & Koenig, 2010), temporary
(Schouten, McAlexander, & Koenig, 2007), and even can develop
around such mundane products as convenience goods (Cova &
Pace, 2006). Recently, the existence of brand communities in social
media contexts was supported by two studies (Habibi et al., 2014;
Zaglia, 2013). Habibi et al. (2014) also identied ve dimensions
which make such communities unique. We further elaborate on
these dimensions later.
The commonality among all these studies is that they show a
manifestation of brand community indicators to different degrees.
However, brand communities can be vastly different depending on
their social contexts and forms (McAlexander et al., 2002). There-
fore, the outcomes and the mechanisms through which these out-
comes can be actualized are different. The second and third
research streams deal with the outcomes of brand communities
for the consumer and the brand.
2.4. Why consumers join brand communities?
The outcomes for consumers are the reasons why they would
join a brand community and keep their membership continuing
(Algesheimer et al., 2005; McAlexander et al., 2002; Ouwersloot
& Odekerken-Schrder, 2008; Zaglia, 2013). Generally consumers
gain utilitarian and hedonic values from their participation in
brand communities (McAlexander et al., 2002; Schau et al.,
2009). These two values can be explained by social identity theory
(Tajfel & Turner, 1985) and social capital theory (Bourdieu, 1983;
Coleman, 1988). According to social identity theory consumers join
a brand community to fulll the need for identication with sym-
bols and groups. This gives them the ability to augment their self-
concept. Muiz and Schau (2007) show how members integrate
the community into their identities in cyberspace by using the
brand community symbols and meanings. They clearly show how
the need for identication is manifested through participation in
brand communities. Consumers also share their passion and
receive pleasure from participating in brand communities (Zaglia,
2013).
Social capital theory predicts that consumers pursue some sort of
economic value through networking with their fellow members in
the brand community. McAlexander et al. (2002) emphasize the
utilitarian values consumers gain by participating in brandfests.
Also, Schau et al. (2009) shed light on brand use practices that aim
directly at enhancing the use of the brand by consumers. Zaglia
(2013) shows that one of the main motivations of consumers is to
obtain the necessary information or skills to better use the product
of their favorite brand. Apparently obtaining such skills and infor-
mation from peers who share the same values and passions is more
convenient than obtaining them from other sources. Ouwersloot
and Odekerken-Schrder (2008) show that members can be catego-
rized within brand communities according to their initial motiva-
tions. They conclude that consumers make stronger relationships
with different aspects of brand communities based on their primary
consumption motivations. Thus, motivations can be an indicator of
the future behavior of consumers in a brand community.
2.5. Brand community outcomes for rms
Firms have more reasons and motivations to facilitate brand
communities. Brand communities perform many important tasks
on behalf of the brand. For instance, brand community members
can play the role of the support service department of their compa-
nies, essentially by helping each other and xing each others prob-
lems with the brand (Schau et al., 2009). They can also be the
brands advocates in defending the borders of the brand (Habibi
et al., 2014) as well as evangelists trying to make desirable impres-
sion on outsiders (Schau et al., 2009). Members of a brand commu-
nity can be an excellent source for innovation and product
improvement because they are highly attached to the community
and the future prospects of the brand matters to them (Fller,
Matzler, & Hoppe, 2008; Von Hippel, 2005).
In addition to these benets, brand communities can inuence
consumer behavior in favor of brands. Loyalty is perhaps the most
studied marketing variable in the brand community literature. At
the beginning researchers qualitatively supported the idea that a
brand community is a place for loyal consumers and that it
increases the loyalty of their members through different mecha-
nisms such as oppositional loyalty and integration in the commu-
nity (McAlexander et al., 2002; Muniz & OGuinn, 2001). Then,
researchers tried to understand different ways by which loyalty
and other important marketing variables are inuenced in brand
communities.
McAlexander, Kim, and Roberts (2003) using a large sample of
ofine community members supported that integration in a brand
community inuences satisfaction which eventually increases
brand loyalty. They also argued that brand loyalty is a more
dynamic and comprehensive variable than the notion of satisfac-
tion. Algesheimer et al. (2005) examine the social effects of brand
communities on variables such as purchase intentions, brand loy-
alty, and community identication. They developed a nomological
network and estimated it using a large sample of various European
car clubs. They showed that brand relationship quality has a posi-
tive impact on brand loyalty and purchase intentions. Also brand
community identication has a positive effect on brand loyalty
through the mediation of community engagement, which is an
essential but under-studied variable in the brand community
literature.
Zhou, Zhang, Su, and Zhou (2012) studied the role of brand
community identication on enhancing brand community com-
mitment and brand identication. Similar to Algesheimer et al.
(2005), through a nomological network they found positive effects
of brand community identication on brand community commit-
ment, which is a concept close to brand loyalty. Casal, Flavin,
and Guinalu (2007) examine the effects of participation in brand
community on brand trust and loyalty. They found, in the context
of online brand communities, that participation in brand commu-
nity enhances brand trust and brand loyalty. Tsai, Huang, and
Chiu (2012) examined the antecedents of participation in brand
community. They ran a study in a non-western context and found
that in addition to consumers personal factors, the perceived level
of trust in the relationships enhances participation in brand
communities.
Stokburger-Sauer (2010) examines the effects of the four build-
ing blocks of brand community (i.e., consumers relationship with
brand, product, company, and other consumers) on brand loyalty
and brand community identication. He found that these elements
can positively inuence brand loyalty, satisfaction and community
identication. More interestingly, he did not nd a difference
between online and ofine brand communities regarding these
effects. Thompson and Sinha (2008) looked at the problem from
an oppositional loyalty perspective. They investigate the positive
effects of brand communities on adopting new products from pre-
ferred brands and avoiding the adoption of new products from rival
brands, as long as comparable products from the preferred brand
are available in the market. The role of brand community contextual
factors is somehow studied in the literature too. For instance, Sung,
Kim, Kwon, and Moon (2010) investigate the differences between
 M.R. Habibi et al. / Computers in Human Behavior 37 (2014) 152161
consumer- and marketer-generated brand communities. Also Jang,
Olfman, Islang, Joon, and Kyungtae (2008) found that who initiates
the brand community can moderate the effect the brand commu-
nity has on brand loyalty and commitment.
Although most researchers paid attention to the positive sides,
brand communities can also have some dark sides. Hickman and
Ward (2007) found that identication with a brand community
can lead members to trash talk outsiders and also have feelings
of schadenfreude, which refers to feeling joyful from someone
elses misery. Algesheimer et al. (2005) also indicate that brand
communities can exert normative pressure on members which
results in reactance, decreased intention to recommend the com-
munity, decreased community participation, and less loyalty.
All in all, due to the complexity of brand communities from an
academic perspective, many researchers tried to investigate their
effects from different perspectives which led to different models.
Brand communities can be very different based on their social con-
texts, platforms, size, and others (McAlexander & Koenig, 2010;
McAlexander et al., 2002). As described next, social media is a com-
pletely different context from previous contexts of brand commu-
nities. There is little research about brand communities on social
media platforms. Additionally we focus on brand trust as well as
the role of community engagement which are under-studied in
the literature, but is highly pertinent to social media contexts.
2.6. Social media and its unique aspects
Social media is a group of Internet-based applications that
build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web
2.0, and allow the creation and exchange of User Generated Con-
tent (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010, p. 61). User generated content
(UGC) is content created by consumers and publicly available
and distributable, has some degree of creativity and is not made
through professional content creation practices. This denition
implies that consumers have a 24/7 access to different sorts of
media such as blogs, microblogs, video/photo sharing sites, and
social networks (Harris, 2009).
Web 2.0 and UGC revolutionized marketing. There is no doubt
that companies that intensively exploit the capabilities of social
media to connect with their customers, employees and other
stakeholders outperform other companies (Corstjens & Umblijs,
2012). Also social media changed shopping behavior (Powers
et al., 2012). Perhaps the most inuential upshot of social media
is consumer empowerment; now consumers have a strong voice
and rms are not in control of the conversations among consumers
(Fournier & Avery, 2011). This implies that every customer and his/
her conversations should matter for marketers.
Social media dramatically changed the patterns of internet
usage and the personality of internet users. For example, a few
years ago most users of online collectives such as forums and chat
rooms were introverts, but today this is no more the case (Ross
et al., 2009). This might be caused by a new trend of internet usage
in which people use their real identities online as opposed to using
the pseudonyms that were common in previous online platforms.
This implies that online behavior changed due to the change in
online users. All in all, these new developments and trends show
that current knowledge might not match with the new aspects
and implications of social media. Therefore, researchers need to
conduct research in areas in which marketing intersects with social
media in order to help managers move ahead. One such area is
brand communities established on social media.
2.7. Unique aspects of brand communities established on social media
As mentioned, one research stream shows the presence of social
media in different contexts and another stream examined the
155
outcomes and consequences of brand communities. However, the
outcomes of brand communities depend on the types of brand
community as well as their unique characteristics. In addition,
the crowds on social media are different and perhaps more heter-
ogeneous than the previous somewhat homogenous (Pitta &
Fowler, 2005) crowds in more conventional brand communities.
Habibi et al. (2014) delineate ve dimensions that make SMBBCs
unique. The rst one is the social context of SMBBCs. The social con-
text provided by social media is unique. The Web 2.0 technologies
put the social context of SMBBCs somewhere between ofine/
physical communities and solely text based communities. For
example, members can obtain a great deal of information (e.g.,
proles, pictures, location, gender, and family status) about
their fellow members; this was perhaps not possible in other
conventional communities. The second differentiating dimension
is structure. Basically, there is no explicit or implicit structure in
SMBBCs (Habibi et al., 2014), unlike previous communities in
which a mechanism was implemented to distinguish devotees
from newbies (Schouten & McAlexander, 1995; Sicilia & Palazn,
2008). The third distinguishing dimension is the scale of SMBBCs.
While brand communities do not go beyond thousands of brand
acionados, SMBBCs may have millions of members (Habibi
et al., 2014). The implications of brand community size were inves-
tigated before, but never such mega sized brand communities. The
fourth factor is storytelling, which is an important aspect of brand
communities. In SMBBCs storytelling is completely different by
using videos and photos accompanied by texts. Storytelling also
is more interactive due to the ability of readers to instantly com-
ment or Like the story. The fth dimension is numerous afliated
brand communities. In social media the cost of initiating a commu-
nity is nearly zero; thus there are many subgroups and related
groups in a given brand community. This can bring up important
issues such as multiple memberships (McAlexander et al., 2002).
These ve dimensions obviously put SMBBCs in a unique situa-
tion compared to previous brand communities; hence studying
their outcomes is inevitable for managers. In this article we
develop a conceptual framework that investigates the role of the
four building blocks of brand community as well as the brand com-
munity engagement in building brand trust, which is one market-
ing goal of investing in social media (Hoffman & Fodor, 2010).
2.8. Brand community based on social media and brand trust
When it comes to trust, some claim that perhaps there is no
other single variable which so thoroughly inuences interpersonal
and intergroup behavior (Golembiewski & McConkie, 1975, p.
131). Trust is critical for attitudes and behavior toward a brand
or seller (Dwyer, Schurr, & Oh, 1987) and is important during shop-
ping (Powers et al., 2012). We hypothesize that the relationships
customers make with brand community elements in SMBBCs
increase brand trust (Fig. 1).
Brand trust is the willingness of the average consumer to rely
on the ability of the brand to perform its stated function
(Chaudhuri & Holbrook, 2001, p. 82). Trust usually is more of an
issue when there is information asymmetry and chances of oppor-
tunism. Decreasing information asymmetry results in increased
trust. Thus, one way brands can make their customers trust them
is to give them the necessary information about the product and
the brand (Chiu, Huang, & Yen, 2010; Gefen, Karahanna, &
Straub, 2003). We argue that there are at least two different
mechanisms through which consumers relationships with brand
community elements (brand, product, company, and other
consumers) in the social media context enhance brand trust. The
rst mechanism is through dissemination of information. Social
media provides a rich communication context for admirers of a
brand and allows to build and maintain their relationships with
156 M.R. Habibi et al. / Computers in Human Behavior 37 (2014) 152161
Fig. 1. The effects of brand community relationships on brand trust. Legend:
C = Customer, P = Product, B = Brand, Com = Company, OC = Other Customers,
BC = Brand Community.
the different elements of the brand. They can easily communicate
and share their thoughts about the product and brand with other
customers and marketers. This essentially requires brand related
information dissemination among these parties. Therefore, these
relationships would positively inuence brand trust.
Theoretically, repeated interactions and long term relationships
increase trust between parties (Holmes, 1991). The second mecha-
nism is related to the level of exposure to the brand and increased
interaction the consumer will have through developing relation-
ships with the brand community elements. When customers join
a brand community based on social media they become constantly
exposed to the brand contents as well as the meaningful experi-
ences that other customers had with the brand and its products.
They begin to communicate with other brand members as well
as with marketers. Sharing meaningful experiences with the brand
on social media and receiving feedback from fellow members
strengthen the ties among consumers and brand entities such as
the product, the company, and other consumers. These enhanced
relationships that result from the rich interactions in social media
would make consumers consider the brand as more trustworthy. In
social media contexts, consumers are frequently exposed to and
interact with brands posts, pictures, videos and fans. Therefore
based on these two mechanisms we hypothesize that:
H1. Consumers relationships with the: (a) brand, (b) product, (c)
company, and (d) other-consumers, on social media, positively
inuence brand trust.
2.9. Does community engagement matter?
Community engagement is highly pertinent to social media.
Engagement is perhaps the Holy Grail of social media; all brands,
fan pages, and organizations pages strive to get a bigger share of
customers attention and engagement in their pages (Hanna
et al., 2011). Similarly, people vary in terms of their engagement
in social media outlets; they can spend as little as a few minutes
or as much as several hours a day consuming social media content.
Regarding H1, it would be an oversimplication to think that who-
ever likes a page or becomes a member of a brand community in
anyway would be heavily inuenced by the brand community.
Not all members are equal; they vary a great deal according to
their engagement with the brand community and have varying
attitudes toward the brand according to their motivations to
become a member on social media. Some members might even
be negative although they are still members and continue shop-
ping (Lapointe, 2012). Some people join to seek help and receive
information, others to learn and improve their skills and knowl-
edge about the products they use, some for entertainment, some
to reect their concerns (Zaglia, 2013), and others might join just
out of curiosity or because the group was suggested by other
friends or the social network platform. Obviously the level of
engagement is not the same for all of these people and the commu-
nity does not mean the same thing to all of them.
Community engagement is the consumers intrinsic motiva-
tions to interact and cooperate with community members
(Algesheimer et al., 2005, p. 21). Interaction in social media con-
texts refers to activities such as sharing stories, photos, videos, lik-
ing and commenting on related materials in the community page.
Community engagement also relates to the desirable effects that
identifying with the brand community has on its members. There-
fore, higher engagement means higher cooperation and interac-
tions, which in turn would result in higher positive effects gained
through such interactions. Therefore, highly engaged consumers
are expected to form stronger relationships with brand elements,
so we hypothesize that:
H2. Consumers relationships with the (a) brand, (b) product, (c)
company, and (d) other consumers are stronger for customers with
high engagement in the brand community compared to customers
with low engagement.
Moreover the effects of these relationships on brand trust
should be stronger for customers who are highly engaged in the
brand community compared to those with low engagement. Con-
sidering the two mechanisms of trust enhancement discussed
before, higher engaged members would gain more information
about the brand, and therefore they would have less information
asymmetry. Additionally, higher engaged members would be more
frequently exposed to brand elements, which according to trust
theories (Holmes, 1991) results in higher levels of trust. Therefore
we believe that brand engagement has a moderating role in trans-
lating the effect of brand community elements to brand trust
(Fig. 1):
H3. Brand community engagement amplies the impacts of cus-
tomers relationships with the (a) brand, (b) product, (c) company,
and (d) other consumers on brand trust.
3. Methodology
3.1. Subjects and procedure
Data were collected through a credited US consumer online
panel. Participants were offered a small monetary incentive in
return for their participation. The survey was administered online
so we were able to program the survey in order to control the
sequence of questions; we made sure that everyone was exposed
and responded to all questions. Also the program enabled us to
measure the time everyone spent on each question. The program
did not allow participants to ll out the questionnaire more than
once.
The target population consisted of people who are members of a
brand community in social networking sites; thus, participants
were asked to rst name the social networking site of which they
are a member. Then the concept of brand community was intro-
duced and they were asked to name the most important brand
community of which they are a member and follow on the social
networking site they just mentioned. Participants were requested
 M.R. Habibi et al. / Computers in Human Behavior 37 (2014) 152161 157

to keep that brand community in mind while answering the Table 1

questions. Item loadings.

With this procedure, which is consistent with previous studies Construct Item Factor loading R-square
in online contexts (Bagozzi & Dholakia, 2006a,b; Casal, Flavin, Consumer/product relationships 1- .792 .628
& Guinalu, 2008), 665 completed questionnaires were obtained. 2- .828 .685
After deleting those who responded too fast or those who men- 3- .668 .446

tioned non-commercial communities such as news groups or Consumer/brand relationships 1- .722 .521
2- .639 .408
celebrities as their most important brand communities, we had
3- .782 .612
569 usable questionnaires. The sample covers 284 brand commu- 4- .773 .597
nities with well-known brands such as Apple, Microsoft, Nike, Coca
Consumer/company relationships 1- .699 .489
Cola, Samsung, Nokia, and Starbucks representing more than 30% 2- .746 .557
of the sample; 45% are female, 54.8% are male, and 0.2% did not dis- 3- .784 .615
close their gender. The largest age range in the sample is 2130 4- .755 .570
5- .554 .307
(51%), followed by 3140 (27%), 2% were under 20 and 20% were
Consumer/other consumer relationships 1- .799 .638
over 40. About 80% of respondents said that they logged into their
2- .798 .623
social networking sites once or multiple times a day. About 95% of 3- .631 .398
respondents chose Facebook as their social networking site; the Brand trust 1- .714 .509
rest chose sites such as Twitter, Pinterest, or Google+. About 49% 2- .800 .640
of the respondents mentioned that they checked their brand com- 3- .592 .351
munity page once or multiple times a day, 33% once or multiple
times a week, and the rest at least once a month.
4.3. Internal consistency
3.2. Measures
To assess the internal consistency of the constructs, we calcu-
The measures were borrowed from the related literature and lated Cronbach alphas (Cronbach, 1970), composite reliabilities,
modied to suit the study. Measures of consumers relationship and average variance extracted (AVE) for all constructs. Cronbach
with brand entities came from McAlexander et al. (2002) and alphas and composite reliabilities are above .7, which supports
brand trust from Chaudhuri and Holbrook (2001) For consumer/ measures reliability (Hair, Anderson, Tatham, & Black, 1995). All
company relationships we added two items from Chaudhry and AVEs are above 0.5 which supports internal consistency as well
Krishnan (2007). The measure for community engagement came (Bagozzi & Yi, 1988). For more details refer to Table 2.
from Algesheimer et al. (2005). All items were 5 point Likert-type
scales, anchored by (1) strongly disagree and (2) strongly 4.4. Testing Hypotheses 1
agree. See the items in the appendix.
To test H1 we ran a structural equation modeling procedure
using EQS 6.1. We constructed a model with four variables (i.e.
4. Analysis and ndings
customer relationships with brand elements) directly inuencing
brand trust (Fig. 1). The t indices indicate a satisfactory t
4.1. Analysis procedure
for the model: v2 = 428.8, (df = 120, p < .05), RMSEA = .067,
GFI = .923, CFI = .934 (Byrne, 1998). The results show that all path
To test the conceptual model we conducted structural equation
coefcients are signicant and positive except for the coefcient
modeling with the whole sample by using EQS 6.1 (Byrne, 1994,
from customer/other customer relationship to brand trust, which
1998). To assess model t we report indices such as chi-square,
is negative (Table 3). Therefore, the ndings support H1a, H1b,
the root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA), the stan-
and H1c at the .05 level. H1d is not supported. The result gained
dardized root mean square residual (SRMR), and the comparative for H1d is counter intuitive, which we interpret in the Discussion
t index (CFI) which are among important t indices (Bentler, section.
1990; Browne & Cudeck, 1993; Marsh & Hocevar, 1985).

4.5. MANOVA analysis to test H2

4.2. Discriminant and convergent validity
In H2, we construed that the strengths of the relationship
To assess construct validity we conducted a ve-factor conr-
between the customer and the four elements of brand community
matory model with all the latent constructs in the model (i.e. four
are higher for those with higher levels of community engagement.
customer centered relationships and brand trust). An acceptable t
(Byrne, 1998) was achieved after two items were eliminated
(v2 = 428.8, df = 125, CFI = .935, RMSEA = .065, GFI = .923); this Table 2
Measurement properties.
change had a negligible impact on the content of the measures
and improved the reliability and validity parameters. All items Construct Number of Cronbach Composite AVE
loaded signicantly on their intended construct and all loadings items alpha reliability

were higher than .5 (Table 1), which supports the convergent valid- Consumer-product 3 .797 .81 .58
ity of the constructs (Steenkamp & Van Trijp, 1991). All AVEs are Consumer-brand 4 .816 .82 .53
Consumer-company 5 .832 .84 .51
above .5, providing additional evidence of convergent validity Consumer-other 3 .780 .78 .55
(Anderson & Gerbing, 1988; Dillon & Goldstein, 1984). For discrim- consumers
inant validity we calculated 95% condence intervals of the corre- Brand trust 3 .750 .75 .50
Community 4 .852 .85 .61
lations among constructs. None of them includes 1, which supports
engagement
discriminant validity (Bagozzi, 1994).
158 M.R. Habibi et al. / Computers in Human Behavior 37 (2014) 152161

Table 3 4.6. Moderating effects of engagement

Test of structural relationships.

Relationship Coefcient (S.E) We used multisample SEM to test for the moderating effects
H1a: Consumer/brand ? Brand trust .345 (.037)* described in H3. This method is consistent with similar research
H1b: Consumer/product ? Brand trust .300(.059)* (Algesheimer et al., 2005). We built separate structural models
H1c: Consumer/company ? Brand trust .313 (.052)* for the high/low engagement groups and we conducted a test of
H1d: Consumer/other consumers ? Brand trust .162 (.039)* moderation to determine whether the respective path coefcients
*
Signicant at p < .05. are different. That is, we unconstrained all the paths rst. This is
the baseline model. Then, we constrained relevant paths one by
one to be equal for both groups and ran the model. This is called
Table 4 the equal path model. We use the difference in chi-square values
High vs low engagement groups. between the two models to judge the equality of paths for the two
groups (Table 7).
N Mean Std. deviation
H3 hypothesized that the effects of customer relationships with
Low engagement 291 2.77 .590 the four brand community elements on brand trust are stronger for
High engagement 286 4.24 .401
those consumers highly engaged with the brand community. The
results support H3a and H3b and for H3d, the results are signicant
but in the opposite direction. H3c is not supported. We elaborate
To test this hypothesis we split the sample into two groups based on these results in the Discussion section.
on the median of community engagement. The median point is 3.5
and details of the two groups are provided in Table 4. The mean of 4.7. Discussion and theoretical implications
the high engagement group is 4.23 and the mean for low engage-
ment group is 2.77. According to statistical tests, these two groups In the age of social media everything is about community build-
are signicantly different (p < 0.01). ing and gaining customers engagement with the community and
Next, we used MANOVA to test H2 because four individual the brand. Our ndings provide detailed insights on how brand
ANOVAs would inate the overall type I error. Moreover, the four community and engagement interact in building brand trust. As
relationships of brand community are correlated. MANOVA predicted three out of four brand community relationships (i.e.
addresses these issues by conducting one test on all dependents customer-brand, customer-product, and customer-company) posi-
variables combined into one variable (Hair et al., 1995; McAlexan- tively inuence brand trust. However, contrary to our prediction
der & Koening, 2010). After conrming that the means of the rela- the customer-other customers relationship negatively inuences
tionships are not equal for the two groups (p < .01), we conducted brand trust. This seems counterintuitive at rst glance. However,
single ANOVAs to further analyze the results. The Levene test considering the unique aspects of social media, there are some pos-
(1960) for homogeneity of variances indicates that for three of sible explanations for this nding.
the four outcome variables the variances are different in the two First, consider the unique aspects of SMBBCs described earlier.
groups (Table 5). Therefore, we report the appropriate statistics One aspect is the lack of structure or hierarchy in such communi-
depending on whether the variables passed the Levene test. ties. This perhaps would confuse some members about the rank
The ndings are reported in Table 6. Hypotheses 2 (a to d) sug- and experience of their fellow members with the brand. This way
gest that consumers that are more engaged with the brand com- they might doubt the credibility of the information they receive,
munity have stronger relationships with the brand community therefore negating their trust in the brand. A second explanation
elements. These hypothesis are fully supported which highlights refers back to consumer empowerment through social media
why engagement is strongly applauded by social media gurus. (Fournier & Avery, 2011; Powers et al., 2012). Consumers connec-
tivity and interactions make them stronger so that they demand
more and expect more from brands. Social media and all consum-
ers being connected together all the time raised consumers expec-
Table 5 tations about brands. Several researchers warned marketers that in
Levenes test of equality of error variances.a
order to avoid the negative trust effects of such empowerment,
F df1 df2 Sig.
Customerbrand 13.769 1 575 .000
Table 7
Customerproduct 20.865 1 575 .000
Results of the analysis for H3.
Customercompany 2.114 1 575 .146
Customerother customers 32.630 1 575 .000 Hypothesis Path coefcient in Chi-square test result
unconstrained model
Tests the null hypothesis that the error variance of the dependent variable is equal
across groups. Baseline model v2 (240) = 620.60
a
Design: Intercept + HghLwEng. H3a g(HE) = 0.97* v2 (241) = 626.04
(CB ? trust) g(LE) = 0.52 Test of H3a
v2 (1) = 5.44, p < .05 supported
H3b g(HE) = 0.523 v2 (241) = 651.80
Table 6 (C-P ? trust) g(LE) = 0.01 Test of H3b
MANOVA results. v2 (1) = 31.2, p < .01 supported
H2 Low High Signicance H3c g(HE) = 0.230 v2 (241) = 620.60
Engagement Engagement of MANOVA (C-Com ? trust) g(LE) = 0.229 Test of H3c
Mean Mean results v2 (1) = 0, p > .05 not supported
a Customerbrand 3.74 4.16 p < 0.05 H3d g(HE) = 0.147 v2 (241) = 693.75
b Customerproduct 3.53 4.37 p < 0.05 (C-OC ? trust) g(LE) = 0.0 Test of H3d
c Customercompany 3.58 4.26 p < 0.05 v2 (1) = 73.15, p < .01 supported
d Customerother 2.99 4.12 p < 0.05
Note: C = Customer, Com = Company, OC = Other customers, P = Product.
customers *
Standardized coefcient.
 M.R. Habibi et al. / Computers in Human Behavior 37 (2014) 152161
brands should encourage and facilitate conversations and not dis-
rupt them (Fournier & Avery, 2011). Remember that in social
media negative posts or comments have ve times the effect of
positive ones (Corstjens & Umblijs, 2012; Powers et al., 2012).
Since consumer-consumers relationships would eventually contain
some negative talks about the brand, this can negate the effect of
such relationships on trust. This also might explain why cus-
tomer-customers relationships have a larger negative effect on
brand trust for highly engaged customers (Table 7, H3d). Con-
sumer-consumer relationship is the point that brands have no con-
trol over in social media contexts (Fournier & Avery, 2011);
therefore it is not unusual to get counterintuitive ndings at this
point; However, researchers should further investigate this issue
before making generalizations from our ndings.
Our results empirically support why community engagement
matters in social media contexts. First, consumers with higher lev-
els of engagement in brand community form stronger relationships
with the brand community elements (Table 6). Making strong rela-
tionships with the brand elements might be one of the main points
of branding and community building. Therefore, the rst benet of
engaging consumers in brand communities lies in the stronger
relationships they form with the brand, the product, other consum-
ers and the company. More importantly, brand community
engagement acts as a moderator and enhances the effect of con-
sumer-brand and consumer-product relationships on brand trust,
and decreases the negative effect of consumer-other consumers
relationships on brand trust.
With respect to the theoretical model (Fig. 1), one might argue
that the direction should be the reverse; that is, because consum-
ers trust the brand, they participate in the brand community and
build the relationships. Although this might be generally true, it
is not necessarily the case in social media contexts, where there
is no limit for anyone to become a member of a brand community.
One can join a brand community by simply pressing the Like but-
ton. In this regard, brand communities based on social media are
different from traditional brand communities for which only brand
owners and those who already trust the brand could become mem-
bers. Nonetheless, even owners of the brand might not fully trust
or know the full functional capabilities of the brands products.
On top of that, the literature supports the directions in our model:
for example Chen, Zhang, and Xu (2009) show that emotional and
informational interactions, which are natural consequences of
ones participation in online interactions, positively inuence trust.
One might be cautious in generalizing these ndings. We asked
respondents to name and keep in mind their most important brand
page on social media while answering the survey. This is to make
sure that the brand group represents a community to them, as
was our assumption. However, not all the members of a commu-
nity have the same emotions about it. Readers should be aware
that they should interpret the results in its aggregated form not
from individuals points of view. That is, if our ndings show that
customer-brand relationships add to the brand trust, it perhaps
does not mean that this is the case for all members of a brand page.
Obviously some people are just there for several reasons and they
do not feel the group is a community. That is why engagement is so
crucial in the age of social media and all brand managers should be
concerned with consumers engagement with their brands.
4.8. Practical implications
This research emphasizes the role of community building and
engaging customers with the community in social media contexts.
Our results clearly show that three out of four brand community
relationships enhance brand trust. Moreover, more engaged cus-
tomers make stronger relationships within the brand community.
Community engagement also moderates the effects that such
159
relationships have on trust; it increases the positive effects of cus-
tomer-brand and customer-product relationships on brand trust;
and decrease the negative effects of customer-other customers
relationship on brand trust.
However, we caution marketers about the relationships that
customers make with other customers. In social media, this is
exactly the point that brands have no control over (Fournier &
Avery, 2011) and mixed results are found in the literature. There
are many anecdotal advices to guide marketers in managing the
effects of customers conversations (Fournier & Avery, 2011;
Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). Our ndings show that brands either
are not following this advice or other sorts of advice and practices
are required. To identify how brands can minimize such negative
effects should be the subject of future studies, but our ndings
show that increasing consumers engagement can lessen the nega-
tive effects of consumers relationships on brand trust.
This article also draws the practitioners attention to outcomes
such as trust when they measure the outcomes of their social
media activities. When it comes to measurement of community
success in social media, there is a large gap between what the goals
of the community are and what is actually being measured. For
example, the main goal of establishing such communities are
enhanced loyalty, trust, idea generation, and market insights but
in practice managers usually measure the number of active users,
posts, or visitors (Moran & Gossieaux, 2001). This shows that man-
agers should be more sensitive to other measures such as trust. Our
model provides some insights for marketers on how to add to
brand trust by community building practices.
All in all, social media based brand communities are crucial
phenomena for marketers to make sense of and understand their
mechanisms and consequences. Such communities are collectives
of millions of people interacting on a daily basis. They are ideal
environments for seeding viral contents since their members are
more likely to share the communitys messages (Brown,
Broderick, & Lee, 2007); customers form strong relationships with
brand elements which in turn add to their trust in the brand.
Thanks to social media, having brand communities with millions
of members is today possible. However, not only the number of
members but also their level of engagement is important.
4.9. Limitations and future research
Although we used a heterogeneous sample of real social media
users, readers should be cautious in generalizing these ndings.
More replications are necessary since we used an online survey
method. Also, we used a general sample of brand community
members. There might be several groups in social media that peo-
ple are members of just to get some benets such as promotions.
Obviously these groups do not represent a community to many
of its members and hence do not show the characteristics of brand
communities. Since the goal was to measure the effects of social
media based brand communities, we asked respondents to name
and think about the most important community in social media
of which they are a member. This way we can safely assume that
what respondents named has the meaning and characteristics of
a brand community to them. However, to be more precise, future
research should focus on a few specic brand communities and
demonstrate the existence of community markers.
Our sample includes brand communities for a wide range of
products. Although brand communities can exist even for conve-
nience goods, the type and intensity of their consequences and
benets might be different. Therefore, we suggest conducting more
specic studies across various product categories to provide deeper
insights for brand managers.
Due to the nature of social media, it is easy for consumers to
have multiple community memberships. Scholars of brand
160 M.R. Habibi et al. / Computers in Human Behavior 37 (2014) 152161
community often neglect the effect of multiple community mem-
bership (McAlexander et al., 2002, p. 40). Therefore social media
create an interesting platform where researchers can examine
the effects of multiple memberships. Multiple memberships are
theoretically possible on social media due to recent ndings that
explain that consumers can experience multiple identities and
connections with their network of friends, brands, or companies
(Bagozzi, Bergami, Marzocchi, & Morandin, 2012).
Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge the nancial support of the
Fonds de recherche du Qubec Socit et culture (FRQSC), and the
useful suggestions by the editor and two anonymous reviewers.
Appendix A
A.1. Construct items
Consumer/product 1-I love my branded product
relationships 2-I am proud of my branded product
3-My branded product is one of my
favorite possessions
Consumer/Brand 1-I value the heritage of the brand
relationships 2-If I were to replace the product, I
would replace it with the another
product of the same brand
3-My brand is of the highest quality
4-I would recommend this brand to
my friends
Consumer/company 1-The COMPANY understands my
relationships needs
2-The COMPANY cares about my
opinions
3-I feel this COMPANY cares a lot
about its customers
4-I feel the company takes my
feedback seriously
5-I feel the company shares
information with me
Consumer/other 1-I have met wonderful people
customers because of the community
relationships 2- I have a feeling of kinship with the
other owners
3- I have an interest in the
community because of the other
owners of the brands
Brand trust 1- This is an honest brand
2- I trust this brand
3-This brand is safe
Community 1-I benet from following the brand
engagement communitys rules
2-I am motivated to participate in
the brand communitys activities
because I feel better afterwards
3-I am motivated to participate in
the brand communitys activities
because I am able to support other
members
4-I am motivated to participate in
the brand communitys activities
because I am able to reach personal
goals
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